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Fluency Wish-List (was Re: Ah-ha! New computer, YANC and fluency)

From:Doug Ball <db001i@...>
Date:Wednesday, April 12, 2000, 18:18
My fluency wish list:
CONLANGS
1. Skerre--of course, since it's my own.  I don't really want a native
speaker-like fluency since it's too late for that, but I would like to have
more skill writing the language and reading aloud from print.
2. Teonaht--as a service to my mentor and friend, so she can answer the
question, "Does anyone else speak your language?" with a yes.
Other conlangs Tepa, Tokana (And speaking of Tokana, Matt, where/how will we
be able to see the new version of the Tokana Reference Grammar?), Aelya,
amman-iar--not really fluency, but just a more intimate knowledge of various
people's conlangs, for the purpose of better understanding for translation
relays/exercises.

NATLANGS--
1. Norwegian--since it is the language of some of my ancestors.  I've
figured that they must have spoken some type of Nynorsk, since the little
bits of the language still passed down don't map to the the standard Bokmål
that you can learn in books.  For the Norwegians on the list, at least one
branch of the family lived on a farm near Trondheim called Hjelmstadbakken,
hence the last name taken when that branch of family arrived in America was
Hjelmstad (which we don't pronounce in the Norwegian style at all)
2. Ancient Greek--since I have taken it this year, and found it an enjoyable
language.  Again, the fluency I'm looking for is more reading, and not at
all speaking.
3. French--I wish they taught this class like they teach Ancient Greek,
geared for reading, because I would really like to read French.  I tried to
read L'étranger by Albert Camus in French as we read it in English, but it
was a useless endeavor.  It was hard enough to get the English read in time,
and when I would read the French it was "don't know that word, don't know
this word"--very frustrating.
4. Latin and Old Norse, and other dead Indo-European languages--not really
fluency, but just a familiarity so I could see broadly the historical
picture of the most historically studied group of languages.
5. Mayan Languages--These I would like to study just to see a whole
different system in an intimate way, escaping from Indo-European.  As
interesting as Indo-European is, I would really like to see a system away
from it, so I can appreciate the "home tongue" that much more.